Blindfolded, By Choice: Why I Planned a World Record DJ Set for a School for the Blind

If you’ve ever Googled my name and seen the words “world record” come up, this is the story behind it. 

Some records get chased. Athletes train for years, miss, try again, miss again, and eventually get there. That’s one kind of record. This wasn’t that kind.

This one lived in my head for a long time before it ever happened. I knew what it was going to be, where it was going to happen, and why, before I’d done a single second of preparation. The blindfold was always part of it. 

The question I couldn’t stop asking myself

I’ve been DJing long enough that the technical side became automatic years ago. And when something becomes automatic, you start noticing things you didn’t notice when you were still learning. One of the things I noticed was how much of DJ culture, the teaching, the content, the whole visual language of it, assumes that sight is central to the craft.

Waveforms. Cue point colours. BPM numbers, etc

And I kept coming back to one question that I couldn’t shake.

If DJing is really about sound and I believe it is, completely, then why do we teach it like it’s something you watch?

That question sat with me for a long time. I didn’t have a neat answer. But I had a feeling that the answer wasn’t going to come from thinking about it. It was going to come from doing something about it.

Then came the second question. The one that made everything else fall into place.

If I’m going to attempt a blindfolded world record, where does something like that actually belong?

The answer was immediate. So obvious I almost laughed. A school for the blind.

Why Pragna Mandir’s Blind School in Dang, Gujarat

It was about the only setting where what I was trying to say would actually land the way I meant it. I wanted to stand in front of students who navigate the entire world without sight, who already know, from lived experience, that you don’t need to see something to understand it deeply and say something to them. 

If I can do this without seeing, there is nothing you love that is beyond you.

That’s what the record was for. 

What the preparation actually looked like

People assume that planning a blindfolded DJ set means practising with a blindfold on. That’s part of it. But the deeper preparation was entirely mental.

I spent time just sitting with the tracklist. Not listening on headphones, not standing at decks, sitting, eyes open or closed didn’t matter, just running the sequence through my head. The order of tracks. The feeling of each transition. Where my hands would need to be and when. The moments in a long set where doubt tends to creep in, when the body gets tired and the mind starts negotiating with itself.

I mapped all of it in memory. Because once the blindfold went on, memory was the only tool I had. 

The people around me, my support system, the ones who believed in this before there was any proof it would work, helped with everything outside my head. Sound, environment, timing, logistics. I trusted them completely. You have to, when you’re about to remove the sense most people rely on to do your job.

What happened when the blindfold went on

I expected it to feel like restriction. Like working with less.

It didn’t.

When the blindfold went on and I stepped up to the decks, something happened that I still find hard to explain properly. The world got smaller and the music got bigger. Everything that usually exists in peripheral vision, the room, the faces, the equipment I’m not currently touching, disappeared. And what was left was just sound. My hands. The music. The connection between them.

I didn’t feel limited. I felt like I’d cut through to what DJing actually is, underneath all the screens and visuals we’ve layered on top of it over the years.

The students in that room weren’t watching a DJ attempt something difficult. They were watching someone arrive at the place they already live, in sound, in rhythm, in the kind of deep listening that develops when sight isn’t available to do the work. I felt that from them. And it changed the energy of the whole thing.

That’s when I knew the record mattered,

One hour, sixteen minutes and fifty-seven seconds

Yes, it became a world record.

But if I’m honest about what that day actually was, the record was almost beside the point.

What I remember most isn’t the moment it was confirmed. It’s the room. The students. The particular quiet that settled in during the set, the kind of quiet that means people are genuinely listening rather than just present. And the thought that somewhere in that room, something shifted, not dramatically, not loudly, but shifted. A small belief forming in someone’s head that difference doesn’t mean less. That the thing you love doesn’t have a list of requirements you have to meet before it belongs to you.

That’s the thing you can’t put in a title.

What that day built into everything I do now

Music lives in memory. I knew that before, but I hadn’t proven it to myself in a way that was impossible to argue with. Now I had.

Limitation, handled properly, isn’t a disadvantage. But it’s a focus. When you take away everything that isn’t essential, what’s left is exactly what matters. That’s as true for DJing as it is for anything else.

Representation in art isn’t about symbolic gestures. It’s about showing up in the right room and doing real work there. A blindfolded DJ performing a world record in a school for the blind isn’t a symbol. It’s an argument, a live one.

I put the blindfold on to prove something I already believed. I took it off knowing it was true.

Music belongs to anyone who loves it enough to stay with it, whether they find it through their eyes, their ears, or something quieter than either.

That’s the record I’m proud of. Everything since has been built on top of that day.